Common Sense
Millard South High School • 14905 Q St. • Omaha, Neb., 68137
December 16, 2016
Volume 17 Issue 4
Santa Sutfin gifts laptops to MPS students
As this semester comes to a close and the spring semester nears, the fabled “one to one,” laptop initiative is becoming reality. With the laptops planned on being issued within the first week of the next semester, During the spring semester of 2016, some students became part of the pilot program for the initiative. The purpose of the program was to test the functionality of the laptops and to see how classes would operate when each student has one. The pilot program lasted that entire semester, and was run again at the beginning of this semester. The laptops that were issued this semester were more up-to-date, though, and give a better sense of what students should expect to receive next semester. The one-to-one initiative has been received with mixed emotions by students, however. “I think it’s a really cool idea and will truly benefit the younger grades, but is kind of useless for seniors since we only get it for one semester,” senior Sydney Watton said. “The laptops seem like a great opportunity for students to get more experience as to what a college environment will be like,” senior Andie Gutierrez said. Some other students are still unclear about the true purpose. The main goal of the One-To-One initiative is not just to modernize the way students learn, but to modernize the way they think. “It’s not so much about the device,” said Dr. Curtis Case, director of digital learning. “What we’re trying to do is transform how teachers teach and how students learn,” he said. “We want them to be less consumers of information and more like producers of information. If every student has a device, we will be able to do more work that involves collaboration and critical thinking.” It seems that future classes will center more around Google Classroom and other applications that are part of the GAFE. “We as teachers will need to have some form of Google Classroom up and running, as well as a calendar that will act like a student’s assignment notebook,” Dr. Jennifer Wilson said. Wilson was one of the teachers who led the meetings on how to teach with the new initiative in action. “It will be different for each teacher,” Dr. Wilson said. “A lot of the math classes are struggling with finding a way for the laptops to make their class easier and not harder,” she said. What Wilson is referring to is the fact that working out math formulas is generally easier to do on paper than it is on a Word document. “Take stoichiometry for example. You would be able to form the equation on a laptop, but if you were to do it on paper you could just write the numbers down and do it much quicker. All the things like subscripts and superscripts are harder to type on a laptop than to write on paper,” Dr. Wilson said. This, among other reasons, is why some classes will be less dependent on the laptops than others. However, laptops will be a significant part of most classes sooner rather than later. This raises one question: What if the students don’t want a laptop? “We can’t make a student take a laptop if they don’t want one. However, the teachers will be teaching under the assumption that every student has a laptop, so they are not required to accommodate students who didn’t take one,” Dr. Case said. “If a student has their own computer, they won’t be able to use it like one of the school’s laptops
Pride Time First B Day Your laptop will be deployed by your Pride Time teacher
January
9
Monday
TO :E ac FR h O St M ud :M en PS t Te ch no lo gy
Eric Murcek Staff Reporter
The laptop that students will be receiving is a HP x360. The device features an Intel Pentium Quad Core 1.6 GHZ-8GB Memory-120GB Solid State Hard Drive-1366x768 touch screen also with: WiFi, HDMI output, headphone jack, 3 USB ports, Ethernet network port, and an SD card reader.
because we will be installing software into the laptops that we aren’t allowed to install onto personal computers,” he said. Another question about the laptops is where the funding for them is coming from. Over the last couple years, budget cuts in the Millard school district has caused some students to worry about whether or not their school activities would continue. It also just so happens that the one-toone initiative is taking place right after the aforementioned budget cuts. However, it should be known that the budget cuts were not made to fund the laptops. While some money was needed to kick-off the initiative, it will not cost the district any extra money going forward.
Your laptop may not be fully charged on the 9th. Teachers are not planning lessons to use them on Monday. Plan to charge it at home and bring on Tuesday and every day thereafter. http://one-to-one.mpsomaha.org
“We’re doing this cost neutral,” Dr. Case said. “We’re not replacing any technology in the libraries or labs, so it’s not costing us any more to give the laptops than it would to replace the desktops in the school,” he said. As with any change, there has been some resistance to the one-to-one initiative. However, the purpose of this initiative is to help the students learn and think like they would in the modern world. Those students who are criticizing the initiative solely because they “don’t like technology” will find that education (and work) with technology is more of the rule than the exception today. As for the students who are going into this initiative open-minded, they should find that it will bring their education level up and prepare them for life after high school.
Teachers will not have extra cords for charging nor extra laptops for students who forget.
Your laptop will only recognize your login. No one else can use it. Do not loan it to another student
only you